Fall From Grace
by celestial1
Summary: She knows that Gibbs has never been too crazy about her, but she's always had a thing for Tony. MAJOR SPOILERS for 'Grace Period.'


Fall From Grace

She knows that Gibbs has never been too crazy about her. They are too different: he is brute force and she is finesse. He sees cases and she sees people. This has led them to butt heads a few times over the years. But she was a philosophy major in college (all but forgotten the moment she strapped on a gun) and she's learned to take the long view. It's a big agency - actually in comparison with the rest of the Feds, it's a relatively small agency, but a few thousand people provides an adequate cushion - and as long as he isn't the one writing her performance reviews, she doesn't give it a second thought.

She's always had a thing for Tony, however. (How could she not? She's **a) **female and **b) **not blind.) He's always managed to take the sting out of working with (or being investigated by) Gibbs, with his wit and easygoing humor and green eyes and gorgeous smile… And even if her rule prevented her from taking full advantage of her attraction for him (she can thank Stan Burley for _that_), she enjoys the game. She's never met anyone who plays it as well as him. And while she's on the subject, she's also never met a better dancer. While she's mostly put Cuba behind her (she even switched perfumes) she can't forget twirling with him for three minutes on a sweaty dance floor.

She's been running her own team for over a year now (that was one of Director Shepard's initiatives - more women in leadership positions - but she'll break the elbows of anyone who says she doesn't deserve it) and she's really happy. Her two agents, Nelson and Hall, are really good guys. She chose them deliberately because they were more towards Tony's end of the spectrum than Gibbs' - at least in attitude, she can't see either one of them smacking the other's head. She buys them pizza, she calls them 'Hall and Oates' and refers to Nelson as 'Ricky.' She smiles indulgently at their antics, and she is happy.

And then the whole situation winds up in the proverbial handbasket.

Aside from her general sense of being peeved (pulling weekend duty _twice_ in a row, as if they don't have _any_ lives at all) she can't shake a bad feeling about it. This one feels too _real _to be a false alarm, and a _real _terrorist attack is their worst nightmare. And when the building blows, it turns out she is right, but she can't bring herself to be happy about that.

Gibbs is the one they bring in to investigate (of course, she thinks; because he's the best but also because he just can't let this one pass). He brings her Kleenex, and he lets her join the investigation even though it's technically against agency rules because they both know she would anyway. But he actually has the gall to order her not to grieve. He keeps giving her the Gibbs look and she wants to scream at him: Just say what we're both thinking. That it was my fault. That I don't deserve to be alive when my whole team is dead. It was a death trap and I let two good men _walk right into it._

She wonders if this is how he felt when Kate died.

And there's this crazy Israeli chick (Daa-_veed_) who she swears is deliberately goading her. She wonders if there is something wrong with Ziva, like she was tragically born without a sense of tact or something. She debates whether it's worth just smacking the girl's face, even though Tony has warned her. What's the worst that Ziva could do? Break her bones? Kill her?

Tony is thoughtful, bringing her candy and blowing cigar smoke around the room (he's always insisted all the movies he watches were good for _something_) and talking about his love life. He sounds like he's really got it bad for this girl - she doesn't catch the name, it sounds somewhere between a grunt and a sneeze - and she's okay with that. She's always known they will never end up together (and she's not in love with him so it would be weird if they did).

So they pick up their charges (she has already forgotten the name of the cleric she is guarding) and they drive to the dinky little storefront, now cleared of dust and shrapnel and the bodies of her team. Her friends. And she doesn't have to shut her eyes to see them, because they are everywhere by now. And then the wall swings open (revealing the room that Officer Daa-_veed_ had cleared only a few minutes before) and there he is, the man NCIS has trusted, with what could never be mistaken for anything but a bomb strapped to his chest.

She doesn't hesitate for a second. She charges him before the door in the wall swings shut.


End file.
